Summary
The heat is unbearable. The hammocks, swollen with prostrate bodies, sway imperceptibly. All around the shelter a multitude of banana trees of all species make up the garden. One can recognize the plantains with their beautiful leaves delicately fringed and stained blood red, the tabɨtabɨrimi with their light and fragile leaves that flutter in the wind, and the baushimi with vaguely yellowish leaf stems. One can also recognize the sturdy and violet-tinged stems of the rōkōmi. New leaves are unrolling their scrolls. Next to the shelter, where the roof ends almost at ground level, rise a few rasha palms with their thorny trunks and their beautiful, shiny green fruits hanging down in thick clusters. The rustling of the palms in the light but warm and moist breeze spreads like a slight shudder over the surrounding vegetation. Nearby, the edge of the forest raises its thick curtain, beyond which rings out the earfilling chirping of the cicadas. Remaema listens to their singing and, modulating her voice to theirs in order to hasten the ripening of the rasha, of which she is fond, she murmurs:
Red-redden, red-redden!
For it is said that the cicadas announce the imminent ripening of the rasha, which they tfius celebrate in their own way.
A hunter comes home, walking with hurried steps under the oppressive sun, a curassow swinging on his back, the bird's white down stuck into his earlobe plugs. Some young people squabble, overflowing with magnificent insolence.
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- Tales of the YanomamiDaily Life in the Venezuelan Forest, pp. 60 - 84Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991